Answer:
d. confounding; affecting
Step-by-step explanation:
Confounding variable: In psychological research, the term confounding variable is defined as an outside impact or influence that leads to change in the outcome of an independent and dependent variable.
It is often being used in influencing the result of an experimental design and is considered responsible for ruining an experiment and produces meaningless results.
It can cause a result apart from the independent variable in an experiment.